Date of Award
6-3-2024
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Biological Science
First Advisor
Michael Nishimura
Abstract
CAR T cell therapy is the adoptive transfer of autologous T cells genetically engineered to express an artificial T cell receptor. In the clinic, CAR T cells have been most effective in treating hematological malignancies and there have been many efforts to continue improving both the safety and efficacy of CAR T cells. Using patient blood samples from the Loyola CD19 CAR T clinical trial, we studied CD19 CAR T persistence and the cell surface phenotype to identify how CD19 CAR T cells change over time in the blood of treated patients and determine whether there were trends associated with clinical outcomes. Unique to these CD19 CAR T cells was the incorporation of a CD34 marker gene (CD34t) which enabled us to study the CD19 CAR T cell population in comparison to the host T cell repertoire in the blood of treated patients over time. We identified that CD19 CAR T cells undergo an expansion phase during the first 2 weeks post-infusion and after, they decline in frequency over time, however, can persist in the blood for as long as 1-year post-infusion. We studied the T cell activation, memory, and suppression phenotypes in the infusion product and in the blood over time of all treated patients to identify how CD19 CAR T cells change over time in comparison to the endogenous T cell repertoire between patients with different clinical outcomes. Although our limited number of patients, we observed trends related to CAR T cell kinetics and physiology which are important to CAR T cell biology in the blood and could be applied to future larger-scale studies.
Recommended Citation
Bochnacka, Oliwia, "Investigating CAR T Cell Persistence, Functional Phenotype, and the Associations with Clinical Response in CD19 CAR T Cell Treated Patients" (2024). Master's Theses. 4521.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/4521
